Electronic devices often contain firmware and application software that may either be provided by the manufacturers of the electronic devices, by telecommunication carriers, or by third parties. It may be difficult to update firmware and/or firmware components in electronic devices. The program code or functions employed to update firmware components may also have to be changed or updated. Such program code or functions, when upgraded, may not fit within the memory available in the electronic device (FLASH or other storage). Changes to firmware or firmware components may be performed in a fault tolerant mode. However, fault tolerant methods may be difficult to implement.
Attempts to upgrade firmware and/or application software in electronic devices requires a determination of a source version of an existing firmware/software and also a target version to which updates may be executed. The need to support different versions of firmware/software to support all of the possible version transitions places an enormous burden on software vendors providing updates to firmware/software. For example, if software in an electronic device corresponds to a version 1.1 and newer versions 1.2, 1.3, 1.9 have been created by the vendor, firmware/software updates supporting all possible transitions, such as those from 1.1 to 1.9, 1.2 to 1.9, 1.3 to 1.9, 1.1 to 1.2, 1.1 to 1.3, 1.2 to 1.3, etc., may have to be applied. The explosion in the number of update packages as new versions are released makes it difficult to manage firmware/software update processes. To update an original source version of firmware/software, electronic devices may be upgraded employing appropriate update packages. Often more than one version update may be required and multiple update processes may be conducted.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings appended hereto.